His master said to him, "Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.” Matthew 25:21

Last week we began a three-part sermon series on the meaning of religion – religion as a rule of life, religion as a way of ordering your faithful response to God, religion as a way of putting a helpful structure around your spirituality, a container for your experience of and relationship with God. We outlined four aspects of Christian religion that the Church, over time, has found to be most useful to us in our practice of faith. The four elements are corporate worship, daily prayer and Bible reading, stewardship, and works of mercy and justice. Last week we focused on corporate worship – gathering with other Christians as the Body of Christ (corpus) to praise God, be fed by Scripture and sacraments, and have our spiritual “reset” button pushed. Next week we’ll think about works of mercy and justice.

Today our topic is daily prayer and Bible reading, as well as stewardship.

But first I want to set the scene with the Gospel parable Jesus tells. It’s usually referred to as the Parable of the Talents, and right away we need to get something clear – this is one of those items that comes under the heading of “Things you want to ask a Biblical scholar.” A talent in the New Testament has nothing to do with abilities or things you are good at, like math or music or sports. A talent is a unit of money – in fact it’s a very large unit of money, equal to 15 years of a laborer’s wage. In modern-day terms, assuming the current New Jersey minimum wage of $8.25 an hour, one talent would be equal to $247, 00. That means we could say that the master gave one of his household servants $247,500; to another $455,000; and to another $1,037,500 – an incredible amount of money!

So right away we know that this is not some sort of morality tale or allegory that Jesus is telling; instead, he’s trying to get a point across about what the kingdom of God is like. For our purposes today, Jesus is saying that we each have been given resources – spiritual, personal, financial – that we will be asked to account for and return to God when the Kingdom comes in all its fullness.. Just like last week’s parable, this one bears a lot of study and digging and asking questions of; but for today I want us to reflect on what we do with the resources that God has given us – especially the resources of our faith.

We know that in traditional Islam, the faithful are told to pray five times daily; in Orthodox Judaism prayer is required three times a day. What about Christians? How often should we pray? When and how? There are lots of answers to that question, but for today I’ll give you the Episcopal answer: pray continually – that’s what St. Paul says just a few verses on from the end of our second reading (1 Thessalonians 5:16-17).

Whoah; how can I do that?! I don’t have that kind of time, or even inclination; not happening! OK, take a breath, and remember that there is a great stream of prayer that is going continually throughout the world from Christians and churches everywhere; somewhere, someone is always praying, whether formally or informally. And whenever we pray, we step into that great stream of faithful, continuous prayer; and our goal is to grow in awareness of that prayer and praise going on all the time.

Having said that, there are some very helpful, structured things we can do. At least twice each day, morning and evening, we should offer prayer to God and put ourselves in a position of listening to God by reading the Bible or some other spiritual writing.When we wake, we give thanks to God for the day, we offer up what will be before us, we remember Jesus’ resurrection which took place in the early morning hours; we ask for strength, guidance and wisdom; we ask God to use us to be a blessing to others; we pray for the world and to remain aware of Christ’s presence always.

In the evening, we give thanks for what has been, even as we review our day and ask forgiveness for the places where we have fallen short; we remember that God is in charge, even as we sleep, and commend to God’s care all those we love, and all the things that worry us, remembering that Christ is always our light in the darkness.

Now there are lots of ways to do this, and many of you do it already – you can use Forward Day By Day, or some other devotional; you can follow the Prayer Book Daily Lectionary as printed in the back of the BCP or on-line. Some mix of using your own words as well as fixed forms of prayer probably works best – include the Lord’s Prayer, a Psalm, perhaps a favorite collect or canticle.Take out the Prayer Book and turn to page 137, and you will see a very short form of structured prayer for morning, noontime, early evening, and bedtime; choose one this coming week and try it out for seven days: just what is printed there, nothing more besides your own particular prayer concerns.

The hardest thing, of course, is time, which most of us never seem to have enough of. If that is true for you, you can still pray: in the car, on the train, waiting on line at Shop-Rite, waiting to pick your child up from school, waiting for a doctor’s appointment, while you are doing yard work or washing the dishes. You already know the Lord’s Prayer, and you can easily add your own; and if your time is severely limited, here a prayer that anyone can say: “I praise my God this day. I give myself to God this day. I ask God to help me this day.”

What matters is that you find a way to connect to God each day, to step into that stream of continual prayer, and do it in a structured way that doesn’t leave you floundering on your own. Prayer is the way we recharge our batteries, that we refocus on God; it’s also the way we develop the spiritual resources that God has given us. It’s as though God has planted us seed in us that will grow, eventually and over time, but will be a much healthier, abundant and fruitful plant if we give it the sun and water of daily prayer and Bible reading.

As Christians we have another element to our structured religious practices that helps us to grown in our love of God and love of neighbor – and that is stewardship. There are two short definitions of stewardship: Stewardship is everything we do after we say “I believe”, AND Stewardship is all that we do, with all that we have, all, of the time. The point, of course, is that everything that we have has been given to us by a good and generous God, but that we don’t own it; it all belongs to God, and we are simply the caretakers, the stewards of what we have been given.

With that in mind, we need to use what we have wisely and well, and we also give some of it back to God for the work of God’s Kingdom. In part, it’s a structured way of sharing, of acknowledging that there are other people in the world besides ourselves, and that we live by God’s grace, not only by our own efforts.

Perhaps the most obvious or easily identifiable form of stewardship is the decision to set aside a percentage of your income to give back to God, and then offer it for God’s work – usually through the Church, but also for other ways and projects where you see the Spirit of God working to bring reconciliation, mercy and wholeness to the world. In these days of EFT and on-line giving, we are perhaps a little less connected to a weekly sense of offering than in the past, but every time and offering is made in Church – money, food, music, bread and wine – we remember that the most important thing we are offering is ourselves; as the Rite I Eucharistic Prayer says: “And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee.”

There are other forms of stewardship, as well. As a parish we have been trying to be good stewards of our buildings – to keep them safe and in good repair, so that they may continue to be good and useful resources for doing God’s work. That is true for any of our physical possessions; not to idolize them, but to use them for God’s glory and for the good of God’s people (and that includes us).

The natural world is another gift of God of which we are called to be good stewards. The beauty and inter-connected life that is all around us in trees, rivers, oceans, air, plants, animals, birds, swamps and mountains is God’s creation, and we Christians are engaged in a struggle (along with the rest of the people on Earth), about how we will care for it; what will be the costs; what will be the benefits; what are our responsibilities?

And then there is time, perhaps the most precious commodity of all. How do we use and apportion and order our time so that it reflects our gratitude to God? How can we be good stewards of our time – not just more efficient or effective, but how do we recognize that time is God-given? We start by recognizing that often there are choices to be made, that not everything that seems interesting is something that we will be able to do.

And it helps to remember that all of our electronic devices tell us 24/7 that there is always something else we could or should be doing if we want to be: fit, smart, successful, attractive, etc., etc. But that is, in fact, a lie – and Christian stewardship helps us to put life into perspective, to remember that we are limited, finite human beings; only God is infinite, and we make ourselves crazy when we forget that. But it is the temptation of our age, and I fall prey to it all the time: God is infinite, and I am not. Stewardship helps us to recall this in a structured, grateful way.

So…Spiritual resources – daily prayer and Bible reading, and stewardship; these are two of the practices that the Church has laid out for us as a way to develop and deepen our faith.

When we do these things – however skilled or clumsy or half-hearted we may feel about them – we will be like the servant who has more talents to give to the master upon his return. And when we do so we surely share in God’s joy.

To be continued…..

Let us pray.Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to thee, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly thine, utterly dedicated unto thee; and then use us, we pray thee, as thou wilt, and always to thy glory and the welfare of thy people; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. ~ BCP

Jesus, looking at [the rich man], loved him and said, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."Mark 10:21This Gospel passage this morning is one that appears in Matthew, Mark and Luke – each with a few small differences in details – but all with the same exacting demands of following Jesus and with the over-the-top illustration of a camel attempting to go through the eye of a needle. I said last week that Jesus often makes challenging statements, things that are really hard; if you ever thought Christian discipleship and following Jesus was a comfy-arm-chair sort of faith, you would be sadly mistaken. There is comfort, yes, and peace and joy and healing – but there is also challenge, and the need for strength and courage and spiritual fitness.So here is Jesus, speaking to a rich man who has many possessions, whose place in the community is assured and whose status of being blessed by God is taken for granted by others because of his wealth. The attitude of the day was that riches were a sign of God’s favor and blessing. What Jesus says to the man knocks the wind out of his sails, rocks the disciples who are witnessing the conversation; Jesus up-ends the conventional spiritual wisdom and piety of his day.And here we are in the season where we focus on our stewardship in a concentrated way. There is much that could be said about this passage – far more than any single sermon could encompass. So rather than make a single, sustained analysis or argument, I’d like to touch briefly on three things: possessions, talent and money.First off, possessions.My siblings and I own a wonderfully cranky two-hundred year-old house in a beautiful part of Connecticut; it came to us when our parents died nearly five years ago. Besides having been our parents’ home for the last twenty years of their life, it is also full of family possessions – furniture, books, paintings, photos, dishes (both antique china and everyday crockery), all kinds of memorabilia that stretch back (in some cases) nearly six generations. Some of it may have financial value; nearly all of it has emotional value.What do we do with all this stuff? How do we divide it up? What do we do with the huge painting of our great-great grandmother that’s really not very good? What do we do with the things that have surrounded us for our whole lives, these possessions?There are certainly practical questions here, and emotional, and relational, but fundamentally these are spiritual questions – about God, and home, and family and stewardship.Next, I want to say something about talent.When we talk about stewardship we so often mention the “holy trinity” of time, talent and treasure – and for good reason – but so often think of them only in the context of what we will give explicitly to the Church. Today we have an opportunity to experience talent (backed up by time and treasure) in our Community Art Show. It’s being held in the Parish Hall; we have 16 artists – children and adults, parishioners and community members – who have offered their artistic talents to share with all of us, and with the public. And there are additional people who have worked hard and spent some funds to make the show come together - and why?Because by pursuing their God-given talent, by honing it through practice and time and hard work and commitment, by being willing to share it with the rest of us, they are honoring God.Each artist is opening a door into another way of seeing, and inviting us to come along, to look in the same direction they are looking, to have a glimpse of what reality looks like from their perspective. They are making themselves vulnerable so that we may have a wider picture of truth and beauty and the way God is in the world.I hope that you will take time this afternoon to come and experience this show; I know I am profoundly grateful for the talent that has been shared – a giving away to others of God’s gifts.Finally, I’d like to ask each one of you to do something right now.Please reach into your pocket or wallet and take out a coin or a bill – it doesn’t matter which. Look at one side or the other until you find the motto: “In God we trust.” Those words have been on some of our coins since the Civil War, and on all of our currency since 1956. Like the Gospel reading, there’s a much longer story involved – some of it having to do with northern states that wanted to proclaim their sense of God being on their side during the Civil War, and other chapters that had to do with our nation’s response to the fear of atheism engendered by Communism.But think about those words on our money – “In God We Trust;” is that true? Do we trust God with our money? And if we do, then how does that trust guide the decisions we make about how we spend, how we save, who we share it with, what we give away, what we keep?If we trust God, if we have a life-giving relationship of love and reliance on God, then the way we use our money will be less anxious, less constrained, less under our control than it would be if we did not trust in God. God knows each of our hearts, God also knows each of our needs and what will bring us joy and inner freedom.Perhaps the next time you take out a coin or a bill – and by extension, a check or a credit card – you can think about the way God wants you to use the treasure he has given you. I don’t know what the answer to that is, but God does, and he would love to have a conversation with you about it; just ask him – he’ll get back to you with answer in one way or another.So – possessions, talent and money; they all come from God, God has given them to us for our use, for the benefit of others and for God’s glory. Thanks be to God. Amen.Victoria Geer McGrathAll Saints’ Church, Millington, NJTwentieth Sunday after PentecostOctober 14, 2012

[Jesus] blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. Mark 6:41-43This is quite a set of readings we have this morning – the Gospel and the Hebrew Scriptures in particular. Each one of those reading (Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:2-22 and Mark 9:38-50) would require quite a bit of unpacking if we were to be considering them this morning. But instead, we are going to set them aside for something different.Last night and tonight are the harvest moon – the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox, the moon by which farmers in earlier times would gather their crops, because the moonrise at this time is not far behind sunset – providing longer light to work by out in the fields. This means that fall is here, the season for final harvest, for making provision for winter, for savoring the brilliance of leaves and the crispness of air.It is also the time when we think intentionally and more intensively about our stewardship of God’s gifts for the coming calendar year, the harvest of all of God’s bountiful gifts. We know that stewardship is an all-year-round practice of our Christian faith – our continuing response to God’s generosity – we also know that having a season to focus on stewardship in a purposeful way is beneficial to all of us, even if some of these ideas may be new for you, or a bit uncomfortable.As a focus for our stewardship this year, the Vestry chose the Gospel story of loaves and fishes. You probably know this one, it appears in all four Gospels, though with some different details; for our purposes this fall, we’ll keep in mind the version from Mark. Jesus is teaching a large crowd of people and it’s getting late; the disciples are worried about this and urge Jesus to send the people away to go buy food for dinner. But Jesus tells the disciples to give the people something to eat. When they protest that the cost would be prohibitive, to buy food for so many, Jesus doesn’t argue with them; he simply tells them to go and see what food they have: five loaves and two fish, it turns out. After telling the disciples to invite the crowd to prepare for dinner by sitting down in the field, Jesus takes the bread and the fish and blesses the loaves, perhaps with these traditional words: Baruch ata Adonoy,Eloheinu melech ha-olam,ha-motzi lechem min ha-aretz.Blessed are you God, King of the Universe,Who brings forth bread from the earth.Then he gives the bread and fish to the disciples to distribute to the crowd. By the time everyone has finished and has eaten their fill, there are twelve baskets of leftover scraps to be collected up – at least five thousand people have been fed in the crowd that day.Now to read this passage and say – “How’d he do that? There must be some logical explanation!”, or even “What an amazing miracle Jesus was able to do!” is to miss the main point of the story. The main point is God’s generosity and abundance, God bountiful nature.What seems like meager resources to us – two fish and five loaves of bread for five thousand people – when offered to God for his mission and work and generosity, become more than enough; there is satisfaction, no one goes hungry, everyone gets what they need – in this case, food. Jesus invites us into this same reality, this same worldview, where we can be open to noticing the needs of the world, take stock of our resources – that which God has given us in the first place, offer what we have for God’s use with glad and generous hearts – asking for his blessing, and then let go of control – trusting that what we have to offer will be enough in God’s abundance.This Gospel passage doesn’t mean that if we just dig a little deeper into our pockets or check books that world hunger will be eliminated, or poverty eradicated, or all forms of debilitating disease will be wiped away. Those are all good things to be working towards, as we respond to the world’s suffering, and seek to make God’s Kingdom a reality in this world; and God may well be calling us to make a greater financial commitment to areas of particular need.But stewardship is much larger than any one particular need; it’s about living day by day in the reality that God has blessed each one of us in so many ways – with life, with love, with a circle of family and friends, with faith and a life-giving relationship with Christ, with the beauty of nature and art and music, with talents and abilities and money and time…all of these wonderful and precious gifts God has given us. Stewardship calls us to say “thank you” to God by offering our whole selves and our resources, to put what we have received at God’s disposal, for God’s purposes.And when we begin to live in this way, we will discover yet another benefit: that God calls us into partnership with him in repairing and blessing the world; God has a purpose for all of us, and invites us to take our place in doing things that matter, to become a link in the chain of goodness that binds the world together.So what does all of this have to do with loaves and fishes, and what does it mean for our annual pledge campaign? On a very basic level, it means that we offer to God some portion of our time and talent and finances, and make a specific commitment as to what that will be (as best as we can) for the coming year 2013. While there is no set dollar amount about what you should give, do consider what percentage of your financial resources you will return to God; the Biblical standard is the tithe – ten percent – and while for the majority of us that is a goal, it is a goal we can move closer toward bit by bit, increasing the percentage that we give. Consider also what commitment of your time and talent you will offer back to God; we all know and feel keenly what a precious resource time is, and offering that for God’s use is a strong expression of our faith.As we go through this season of stewardship we will be doing several things: you will each receive a letter this week outlining our stewardship plan; each week in the bulletin there will be a take-home insert from The Episcopal Church relating stewardship to the week’s Bible readings; for several weeks we’ll have parishioners offer their own thoughts and witness about faith, the Church and stewardship; later in October we’ll send you a pledge packet with some further details about All Saints’ program and finances and a pledge card that we will ask you to use to make your commitment for 2013; on October 28 we will host a Ministries Fair (as part of the kids’ Trunk or Treat event) outlining the ministries through the parish in which you can be involved; and then on November 4 – All Saints’ Sunday – we’ll ask you to return your pledge card, your promise card, after prayer and reflection and conversation with your family about what your commitment will be.Throughout this season we’ll be praying together, week by week, the stewardship prayer on the card in your pew racks. And we’ll do all of this knowing that whatever we have to offer to God in faith and trust and gratitude will be accepted with joy and gladness, and combined with everyone else’s offering will be enough to do the work God has called us to do. We offer what we have, God blesses it, and it is enough – bountifully enough, abundantly enough, with leftover pieces in ways that we could never imagine on our own. What a blessing to know that God has called us into this partnership, into this shared enterprise of faith and stewardship and bounty. Amen.Victoria Geer McGrathAll Saints’ Church, Millington, NJEighteenth Sunday after PentecostSeptember 30, 2012